Marxist Humanism and Praxis

Edited,
with translations, by Gerson S. Sher

Introduction

This
volume presents a collection of essays by the principal members of it group of
Yugoslav philosophers who have perhaps become best known in the international
context by the name of their now defunct journal, Praxis. As philosophers,
they have made vital contributions to the theory of Marxist humanism, provoking
widespread debate about the essential humanist dimension of Marx’s thought, the
points of convergence and divergence of Marxism with other philosophical persuasions,
and the nature of philosophical discourse. As members of their own society, they
have drawn attention to the extent to which “official” Marxism, as represented
by the regime’s ideology, has been divested of its humanist thrust and critical
cutting edge through association with the institutions of social power, and for
this many of them have had to pay dearly. Though widely respected in the world
philosophical community, in Yugoslavia several members of the Praxis group
are barred from teaching, making public appearances, publishing, or responding
to scurrilous attacks in the press; their journal Praxis, once a lively
Yugoslavand international forum for discussion of the issues of Marxist
humanism and of the ambitious Yugoslav experiment in workers’ self-management,
has been silenced. [1] While the repression of the Praxis group may not
be the most serious instance of intellectual persecution in [1/2] Eastern
Europe today in terms of physical hardship or imprisonment, it is certainly among
the most tragic.

Praxis
was a natural outgrowth of the Yugoslav Revolution, a unique series of events
that began by embracing the principles of Stalinism and that culminated by just
as passionately advocating the revolutionary principle of socialist humanism.
It was the great theoretical accomplishment of Praxis to elaborate a systematic
philosophical basis for that principle in an equally revolutionary reinterpretation
of Marx himself, a reinterpretation based firmly upon the premise that Marxism
is first and foremost a philosophy of man. But the conclusions ultimately
reached by that reinterpretation, as well as the internal logic of the process
of reinterpretation itself, were such that the Praxis enterprise was virtually
destined to result in a more or less fundamental confrontation with the authorities,
if not, perhaps, in a total rupture.

Why
this was so can be seen from a brief sketch of the premises of Praxis theory.
Underlying the humanist interpretation of Marxism is a radically dynamic view
of man and his relation to nature, history, and society. It is a view of man that
stands in direct contrast to that of the orthodox Marxist school, for which man
is merely a passive creature of objective forces—“laws of movement” of nature,
history, and society—which exist externally and independently of him. Man is a
being of praxis, of practical activity which seeks to challenge, destroy, and
transcend the limitations that everyday existence places upon his ability to develop
as a free, creative being. Yet because this practical activity transpires in a
world of objects and symbols and must ultimately assume objective form, it is
capable of becoming alienated from its source. Thus man comes to confront the
product of his activity as an estranged and hostile force that is the agent of
his enslavement rather than of his liberation. By the same token, it is the consciousness
of this very state of alienation that provides man with the impulse for new acts
of praxis. This interaction between praxis and alienation so characteristic of
all human activity, not the general properties of matter or movement in some metaphysical
sense, is the source of the revolutionary dialectic.

Just
as Marxist humanism stresses the dynamic side of human nature, it presupposes
a dynamic role for theory as well. And while the Praxis Marxists may have
devoted the greater part of their philosophical oeuvre to elaborating a profoundly
humanist vision of man, perhaps their most important theoretical and indeed practical
contribution lies in their view of theory itself. Theory—or, more broadly, consciousness—emerges
not merely as a passive reflection of objective reality, but instead as the product
of man's creative confrontation with reality, which itself must be understood
not as that which is merely given in the present but as a sum of historically
conditioned possibilities. Indeed one of the most vital tasks of consciousness
is to identify those possibilities by penetrating and exposing the mystifications
of ideology and by recognizing [2/3] alienation in all its forms. Consciousness—or,
more accurately, radical, critical consciousness—thus becomes the touchstone
of all praxis, from the microlevel of man’s daily interaction with the world to
the macrolevel of the transformation of political structures and social systems.
What is at issue, then, is not merely the status of Lenin’s mechanistic reflection
theory or even of the orthodox Marxist thesis of the relationship of base to superstructure,
but the very ability of Marxism to remain a potent tool for the critical examination
of reality in the postrevolutionary era. With Marx himself, the Praxis
Marxists stressed at the very outset their commitment to a "critique of all
existing conditions," which must, in Marx's words, be “ruthless in two senses:
The criticism must not be afraid of its own conclusions, nor of conflict with
the powers that be.” [2]

The
Praxis Marxists took this challenge literally. Their commitment to radical
criticism led them not only to reject the dogmas of dialectical materialism in
the name of a humanist philosophy of man more faithful to Marx's original meaning,
but also to defy authoritative interpretations of existing social and political
reality, to subject contemporary incarnations of socialist practice to unremitting
criticism, and to undertake the unwelcome task of reminding political leaders
of how far their efforts had strayed from originally charted ideals. To be sure,
this course involved taking certain risks. Not least of these was the risk of
running afoul of those in authority, of ruffling the feathers of this or that
politician who might find cause to take exception to their barbs, or of exacerbating
controversy when it was politically more convenient to stifle it. Yet the fact
that they were willing to take these risks itself signified a basic level of trust
on their part toward the political system. For the "Yugoslav path" was
to have represented a radically new departure in the history of socialism, a decisive
rejection of the Soviet authoritarian model and a bold experiment in truly democratic
socialism characterized by workers' self-management, economic rationality, and
a relaxation of Party control in the area of culture. In order to ensure that
the new democratic forms generated in the course of the experiment were not to
degenerate into new forms of alienated authority and repression, the Praxis
Marxists came to believe that criticism—persistent, incisive, uncensored, philosophically
grounded, theoretically sound Marxist criticism—was a vital component of that
sustained effort at social transformation. In his essay on "Authority and
Authoritarian Thinking" in this volume, Ljubomir Tadić expresses this
idea in the following way: "The principal difference between socialism and
every form of authoritarian thought is best expressed in the difference between
the status of the citizen and that of the subject. For only the
citizen is a being with the 'gift' of free speech. The mentality of the subject,
in contrast, is distinguished by silence and respect toward higher authority."
Indeed in their constantly recurring emphasis on the [3/4] supreme importance
of the freedom of criticism to the goal of democratic socialism, the Praxis
Marxists have made an important contribution to democratic theory in general in
an age when the dominant forms Of "socialism" and "democracy"
cast ominous shadows on the prospects of a humane and truly democratic world order.

The
journal Praxis, on the pages of which many of the contributions to this
volume appeared for the first time, was in fact nothing less than a bold attempt
to institutionalize theoretical criticism informed by Marxist‑humanist philosophy
as an integral part of the Yugoslav experiment. And for over a decade, from 1964
to 1975, the Praxis Marxists were unprecedentedly successful in this effort.
To appreciate the significance of their accomplishment it is necessary to view
it in the broader context of East European development since World War II. Nowhere
else in Eastern Europe has there arisen such a sustained, public, animated, unfettered,
and candid dialogue concerning the founding principles of the society, the sociopolitical
and cultural forms that have evolved under communist rule, and the nature of political
authority. Nowhere else has such debate, even when it has surfaced no matter how
briefly, been accorded the degree of acceptance and even legitimacy that it earned
in Yugoslavia, and nowhere else did it attract such broad international interest
among Marxists of all persuasions, socialists, humanists, social scientists and
philosophers, students, and many others—not excluding the official custodians
of truth of the communist one-­party states. That all this occurred within the
theoretical framework of a humanist interpretation of Marxist theory testifies
to the elasticity and depth of an intellectual structure that is capable of recognizing,
criticizing, and rectifying its own failures. That all this occurred in Yugoslavia,
moreover, testifies not only to the extraordinary elasticity and resilience of
that remarkable country and its political structure, but also, in the wake of
the forceful termination of the Praxis experiment, to the gradual loss
of some of those very qualities that have hitherto made the Yugoslav experiment
a unique and bold adventure in democratic socialism.

The
essays gathered in this volume are but a meager representation of the writings
of members of the Praxis group. As suggested by the title of the leading
essay by Gajo Petrović, Praxis’s primary spokesman and coeditor‑in-­chief
throughout its often stormy existence, the general theme of these contributions
is the relationship between philosophy and politics in socialism. What are the
boundaries and areas of overlap between them? Must philosophy in a socialist society
necessarily be the handmaiden of politics, and if not, must it necessarily be
cast in the role of antagonist? To what extent, moreover, can socialist political
life be governed by philosophical principles if, as Marx put it, the realization
of philosophy implies that the philosophical must become worldly, and the world
philosophical? The answers offered by the Praxis Marxists may [4/5]
largely be informed by their own personal experiences and aspirations, but they
are of an intrinsic value that is not exhausted by considerations of time and
place alone.

The structure
of the collection follows a distinction made by Petrović early in his opening
essay among socialism as a social order, socialism as a movement, and socialism
as instrumental theory—or, what is often the same thing, as ideology. A final
section is devoted to a theoretical discussion of the question of socialism and
human rights, a term which has entered popular parlance of late but which, as
its uneven history in the worlds of both academic philosophy and everyday practice
has suggested, may be in need of serious critical analysis. As for the scope of
essays represented here, the editor takes full responsibility for any shortcoming
that may result from the relatively narrow thematic focus in the limited space
available. It would require more than one volume to do justice to the dizzyingly
broad spectrum of Praxis theory.

With
the exception of the essays by Petrović, Vranicki, and Stojanović, which
are reproduced here from earlier English translations by permission of their publishers,
the contributions to this volume appear here in English for the first time, and
some of them for the first time in any foreign language. In translating these
essays, I have taken the liberty of providing references to all works cited in
English-language editions when available for the reader’s convenience.

Gerson
S. Sher Reston, Virginia

NOTES

1.
For an account of the Praxis experience, see my Praxis and Marxist Criticism
and Dissent in Socialist Yugoslavia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1977).